December Love Part 89

He cast a peculiar glance at her, full of intense shrewdness. It made her remember the Cafe Royal on the evening of her meeting with the Georgians, her pressure put on d.i.c.k Garstin to make Arabian's acquaintance, her lonely walk in the dark when Arabian had followed her, her first visit to Garstin's studio, her pretended reason for many subsequent visits there. This man must surely have understood always the motive which had governed her in what she had done. His glance told her that. It pierced through her pretences like a weapon and quivered in the truth of her. He had always understood her. Was he at last going to let her understand him? His eyes seemed to say, "Why pretend any longer with me? You wanted to know me. You chose to know me. It is too late now to play the conventional maiden with me."

It is too late now.

Her will seemed to be dying out of her. She walked on beside him mechanically. She knew that she was going to do what he wished, that she was going to his flat again; and when they reached Rose Tree Gardens without any further protest she got into the lift with him and went up to his floor. But when he was putting the latchkey into the door the almost solemn words of d.i.c.k Garstin came back to her: "Beryl, believe it or not, as you can, that _is_ Arabian!" And she hesitated. An intense disinclination to go into the flat struggled with the intense desire to yield herself to Arabian's will. Arabian was before her eyes, standing there by the opening door, and Garstin's portrait was before the eyes of her mind in all its magnificent depravation. Which showed the real man and which the unreal? Garstin said that he had painted her intuition about Arabian, that she knew Arabian's secret and had conveyed it to him. Was that true?

"Please!" said Arabian, holding open the door.

"I cannot come in," she said, in a dull, low voice.

Beyond the gap of the doorway there lay perhaps the unknown territory called by Garstin the underworld. She remembered the piercingly shrewd look Arabian had cast at her by the river, a look which had surely included her with him in the region which lies outside all the barriers.

But she did not belong to that region. Despite her keen curiosities, her resolute defiance of the conventions, her intensely modern determination to live as she chose to live, she would never belong to it. A horrible longing which she could not understand fought with the fear which Garstin that day had dragged up from the depths of her to the surface.

But she now gave herself to the fear, and she repeated doggedly:

"I cannot come in."

But just at this moment her intention was changed, and her subsequent action was determined in her by a trifling event, one of those events which teach the world to believe in Fate. A door, the door of Mrs.

Birchington's flat, clicked behind her. Someone was coming out.

Instantly, driven by the thought "I mustn't be seen!" Miss Van Tuyn stepped into Arabian's flat. She expected to hear the front door of it close immediately behind her. But instead she heard Mrs. Birchington's high soprano voice saying:

"Oh, how d'you do? Glad to meet you again!"

Quickly she opened the second door on the left and stepped into Arabian's drawing-room. Why had he been so slow in shutting the front door? She must have been seen. Certainly she had been seen by that horrible Minnie Birchington. There would be more gossip. It would be all over London that she was perpetually in this man's flat. Why had not he shut the door directly she had stepped into the hall? Her nervous tension found momentary relief in sudden violent anger against him, and when at length she heard the door shut, and his footstep outside, she turned round to meet him with fierce resolution.

"Why did you do that?"

"Beg pardon!" he said, gently, and looking surprised.

"Why didn't you shut the front door? That--Mrs. Birchington must have seen me. I know she has seen me!"

"I had no time. I could not refuse to speak to her, could I? I could not be rude to a lady."

"But I didn't wish her to see me!"

She was losing her self-control and knew it. She was angry with herself as well as with him, but she could not regain her self-possession.

"Why not?" he said, still very gently. "What is the harm? Are we doing wrong? I cannot see it. I say again, I had no time to shut the door."

"Did she see me?"

"Really I do not know."

He shut the sitting-room door.

"I hope," he said, "that you are not ashamed to be acquainted with me."

His voice sounded hurt, and now an expression of acute vexation had come into his face.

"Really after what has happened with d.i.c.k Garstin to-day I--"

His face now had an expression almost of pain.

"I am really not _canaille_," he said. "I am not accustomed to be thought of and treated as if I were _canaille_."

"It's all right," she said. "But--you see my mourning! I am in deep mourning, and I ought not--"

She stopped. She felt the uselessness of her protest, the ungraciousness of her demeanour. Without another word she went to the sofa by one of the windows and sat down. He came and sat down beside her.

"I want you to help me about d.i.c.k Garstin," he said.

"How? What can I do? I have no influence with him."

"Oh, yes, you have. A lady like you has always influence with a man."

"Not with him."

"But I say you have."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to tell him what I have said to you to-day."

"That you won't have the picture exhibited?"

"Yes."

"He'll only laugh."

"Beg him for your sake to yield."

"But what have I to do with it?"

"Very much, I think. It will be better that he yields--really."

She raised her eyes to his.

"We do not want a scandal, do we?"

"But--"

"If it should come to a fight between d.i.c.k Garstin and me there might be a scandal."

"But my name wouldn't--"

Again she was silent.

"I might try. But it wouldn't be any use."